Collision course: Whales and ships in SoCal

A fin whale was caught on the bow of a ship in Long Beach Harbor in October 2008, part of what marine ecologists said is an increasing problem with whale-vessel collisions in Southern California. The carcass of a different fin whale that had been hit by a ship washed ashore in Point Loma late last year.
— Alisa Schulman-Janiger

A fin whale was caught on the bow of a ship in Long Beach Harbor in October 2008, part of what marine ecologists said is an increasing problem with whale-vessel collisions in Southern California. The carcass of a different fin whale that had been hit by a ship washed ashore in Point Loma late last year.
/ Alisa Schulman-Janiger

T.L. Garrett, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association in Long Beach, praised the Coast Guard’s strategy, saying it was supported by science. “Our goal from the shipping industry perspective is to do everything we can to minimize negative interactions between whales and ships,” Garrett said. “Nobody wants to hit a whale. It’s a tragedy.”

Other ideas for reducing ship strikes include putting whale spotters onboard vessels, using acoustic monitoring systems to detect whales and warning whales with sounds. Environmental groups also are pushing for limits on ship speeds in California’s marine sanctuaries in hopes of reducing ship strikes, something the Garrett said isn’t scientifically justified. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is launching a marine spatial planning process to balance the multiple demands on nearshore waters. It includes efforts by Redfern to figure out where whales congregate.

Conservationists such as Brian Segee at the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara are pleased by increasing attention on the problem but said efforts remain piecemeal.

“There are increasing numbers of ship strikes all along the California coastline, so that warrants a big picture response by the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to tackle this issue on a broader regional-state level,” he said.

It’s impossible to know for sure how many whales are damaged by ships because many dead or injured animals are never seen by people. Sometimes, boat captains document whale collisions, but other times they don’t even know they have hit a creature. In addition, dead whales are reported by observers in marine mammal stranding networks.

Related research has revealed important trends. Scientists at the nonprofit Cascadia Research in Olympia, Wash., found that nearly one-third of the large whales stranded in the Pacific Northwest between 2001-2010 had been killed by ships — a far greater percentage than they found in earlier decades. They also discovered that the number of ship strikes rose fivefold between the 1990s and the 2000s.

In Southern California, concern is concentrated around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which form one of the world’s busiest import-export hubs. Nearby waters also are home to a major summer population of blue whales, along with groups of fins and humpbacks, that take advantage of upwelling waters near the continental shelf that provide large volumes of food. Gray whales also pass by on their way to and from birthing grounds in Baja California.

To complicate matters, blue whales sometimes feed near the surface and hang out there at night when they can’t be easily seen. Scientists also have shown that whales don’t necessarily act in predictable ways.

“We all assumed, of course, that a whale would know to avoid a ship, but that doesn’t appear to be the case,” said John Calambokidis, who tracks whale behavior for Cascadia. “They basically responded in a way that wasn’t very helpful to them avoiding being hit by a ship and that might make them more vulnerable.”